IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another day, another oil explosion, this time at an Exxon refinery in CA; 'Anti-petroleum' activists are a security threat, says Canada; January 2015 the 2nd hottest on record; PLUS: 'Our best idea': President Obama protects 3 new national monuments... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): NYC could see 6-ft sea level rise; 'Every Kid in a Park': all 4th graders to get free national park passes; What can be done about psuedo-skepticism?; Duke Energy to pay $100m for coal ash spill; Arsenic found in CA water; Four new oil-related spills in North Dakota... PLUS: Fox News has no shame: Easily duped wingnuts spout phony science and climate-change lies... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another day, another oil train explosion - make that two; Schizophrenic extreme weather pounds the U.S.; U.S. Southwest about to get a lot drier; PLUS: Ohio bans local fracking bans.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Shell CEO calls for 'balanced' discussion on climate change; Proliferation of chemicals linked to rise in neurological disorders; Water taps start to run dry in Brazil's largest city; BC First Nations reject another pipeline across their lands; How the White House walked away from 'clean coal'; EPA targeted after preliminary 'veto' of Pebble Mine; Uncertain future for damaged nuclear waste repository; Judge dismisses levee lawsuit against oil and gas industry... PLUS: "More research" into geo-engineering is not such a hot idea... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Eleventh time's the charm: House GOP passes Keystone XL bill --- again; Apple Computers invests big in big solar; Record snow in Boston with more on the way; Oil companies dump toxic waste into CA's aquifers; PLUS: Uncle Sam wants YOU to help save the monarch butterfly... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Australia's climate change-denying Prime Minister Tony Abbott takes a coal drubbing; Record number of malnourished baby sea lions washing ashore in CA; BP's missing oil has been found - at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico; PLUS: The first presidential warning on global warming was issued 50 years ago this week... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

When California state Sen. Lou Correa (D) authored SB 29 last year, allowing Vote-by-Mail (VBM) ballots to be accepted and counted even if they arrive at county election headquarters up to three days after Election Day, some state Election Integrity advocates were concerned.

Somewhat vague language in part of the bill might allow for a case where, in the event of a very close margin announced on Election Night, unvoted absentee ballots could be quickly filled out after the fact and delivered to election officials inside the new three day post-election window.

If a race was close enough, late arriving ballots --- either legitimately voted on or before Election Day, or, depending on how local election officials choose to interpret the statute, illegitimately voted and delivered after Election Day --- could actually reverse the results of such a contest.

Little could Correa have known, however, as he was successfully moving his bill through the California state legislature last year, to take effect in January 2015, that the very first election of the year --- and the very first to be decided by a small enough margin that it could be directly affected by late ballots now allowed under SB 29 --- would be...Lou Correa's...

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Mercury levels rising in yellowfin tuna; State let oil companies taint drinkable water; IPCC: World has not woken up to water crisis caused by climate change; Saudis using oil to pry Russia away from Syria?; How fish could change the definition of 'organic'; Not enough time for geoengineering to work; One bacterium could save biofuel industry... PLUS: Fossil fuel companies gave Congress hundreds of millions to support Keystone XL... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: U.S. pipelines now rupturing faster than we can keep track of them; So, U.S. Senate passes Keystone XL bill with Dem help; Obama's India trip a boost for US nuclear industry; IMF calls for end to fossil fuel subsidies; PLUS: Some good news: fracking banned in Scotland, and great 'Fox News' for a change!... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): It's not too late to stop climate change, and it'll be super-cheap; Americans are out of step with science on pretty much everything; Climate models don't over-predict warming; Big Utilties' 'Kodak Moment': a phase-change builds; Air pollution plunges in AL; Feds open waters to largest offshore wind farm; EPA sued over industrial livestock pollution... PLUS: Oceans on the verge of a 'mass bleaching event'... and much, MUCH more! ...

If you were looking for a fresh reminder as to why Vote-by-Mail is a terrible idea, why provisional ballots are not the same as actually casting a vote, and why there needs to be more accountability for and oversight of election officials, today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio should fit the bill.

In short, we cover the election contest now pending in the race for City Council (Seat 1) in the San Diego County city of Chula Vista, CA. The certified results from the November 2014 election show a 2-vote margin between the John McCann (R) and Steve Padilla (D) in a race with some 37,000 ballots cast. McCann has been certified as the "winner".

Trouble is, according to the lawsuit [PDF], at least 15 mail-in and provisional ballots were rejected, even though the signatures on them matched the signatures from the voters' registrations on file. That, argues attorney John S. Moot (my guest this week, and a former Chula Vista City Council Member himself), is in violation of the law.

The other trouble is, those ballots were rejected by San Diego County Registrar Michael Vu, who was the infamous Election Director of Cuyahoga County, Ohio's most populist (and most Democratic) county during the 2004 Presidential election, when two of his immediate subordinates were indicted and found guilty of rigging the Presidential "recount" in Cuyahoga. Yes, if you didn't know or don't remember, there was a partial "recount" of that election, across the entire Buckeye State, as requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties. And, yes, it was found to have been rigged in a court of law.

Vu, who was protected at the time by the Republicans who ran the Cuyahoga Election Board, was never charged and was happily hired not long thereafter by San Diego County, where elections have been little more than a joke for many years, even before Vu got there.

For the full story on this, listen to this week's show and Moot's commentary on the suit he's filed on behalf of his client, a long-time poll worker and voter from Chula Vista.

A cluster of new, eye-opening studies released late last week bring into sharp focus the fact that society's current path threatens to bring us into a head-on collision with planetary boundaries, leading to unnecessarily unpleasant results.

That's quite a trend. One could hold out hope that this undeniable --- and undesirable --- trend of rising global temperatures would bring an end to the ludicrous propaganda of the climate change denial industry and their claims of a "global warming pause," "hiatus" and "global cooling" --- all in service of perpetuating the supremacy and profits of the fossil fuel industry. But that hope, as we detailed on Friday, is most likely in vain.

If you keep doing the things that raise global temperatures, you shouldn't be surprised when temperatures keep going up. Sec. of State John Kerry summed it up succinctly: "What’s surprising is that anyone is surprised that 2014 was the hottest year on record. The science has been screaming at us for a long, long time."

Except humanity is doing a lot more than just cooking the planet by raising the temperature. Consider this less-than-cheerful news from the UK's Guardian [emphasis added]...

During our most recent Green News Report, we sang the praises of California for a number of recent, noteworthy environmental accomplishments and initiatives.

You'll pardon us if we do so just a bit more here, but only because it affords us an opportunity to bash Texas at the same time.

An editorial by the San Antonio News-Express late last week criticized how lawsuit-happy the state of Texas has become over the past decade. Specifically, under their former Republican AG, now Gov.-elect Greg Abbott, the state filed 31 lawsuits against the federal government from 2004 to 2013, claiming the state had little choice, as they'd become a victim, as some sort of "target" of the feds due to their "success." Or something. (Didn't those guys used to be pretend to be against frivolous abuse of the judicial system?)

Anyway, the paper's editorial board noted how the state has filed lawsuits against the federal government of late on everything from Obamacare to immigration to voting laws, etc. And then they noted this [emphasis added]...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: America's first high-speed rail line breaks ground in CA; Environment to lose another champion in the Senate; More tank problems one year after WV toxic chemical spill; Fracking industry causing more quakes in OH and TX; PLUS: The Golden State invests big time in the new green economy... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Congress wraps up for the year with Republican anti-environment initiatives to be signed by the President; UN climate summit wraps up in Peru - ALL nations are in for final talks in Paris; PLUS: Another Bush, another climate change denier... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Remembering the genius who got BPA out of your water bottles, and more; Jan.-Nov.2014 the hottest ever recorded; Why the US-China climate deal is a true game-changer; Solar efficiency breakthrough from Australia; Fact or Fiction? Can geoengineering solve our global warming problem?; Saudi Arabia 'playing chicken with its oil' ... PLUS: Climate Change Takes A Village: as the planet warms, a remote Alaskan town shows just how unprepared we are ... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: UN climate summit underway to map the future of global warming; California hit by record rain, amid record drought; Global implications of falling oil prices; PLUS: The toxic legacy of the world's worst industrial disaster thirty years later... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Election 2014 Environmental Democalypse Now: get ready for the Republican hegemonic hellscape; Climate denier caucus now in charge; PLUS: At least one note of very good environmental election news... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

California Congressman Duncan D. Hunter (R) is in the middle of an amusing kerfuffle after claiming that he was told by unnamed U.S. Border Patrol agents that "ISIS is coming across the southern border," and will soon be "bombing American cities [after] coming across from Mexico." Most disturbing, he also said that while several of the Islamic terrorists had already been nabbed by federal agents, more have most likely slipped through and are amongst us even now!

"I know that at least 10 ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas," the Congressman told a dubious Greta Van Susteren on Fox "News" earlier this week. Though those 10, luckily, were taken into custody, Hunter added, "you know there's going to be dozens more that did not get caught by the Border Patrol."

The Dept. of Homeland Security, however, has denied the claim, calling it "categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground." The Mexican Embassy has similarly disputed it. Politifact investigated the matter, before describing it as "incorrect and ridiculous" and rating it a "Pants on Fire" lie. And now other Republicans are being forced to grapple with how and whether to back up their colleague or not.

Nonetheless, Hunter Jr. is sticking by his alarming claim.

But this is hardly the first time a California Congressman named Duncan Hunter went on record, on television, during the heat of a campaign to simply make shit up about scary aliens sneaking across the border to come into our country and undermine our very way of life.

As The BRAD BLOG highlighted in 2007, Hunter Jr.'s father, now-retired Rep. Duncan Hunter Sr. --- who held the same Congressional seat his son holds now --- offered a similarly outrageous and apparently bald-faced lie while pretending to run for President that year.

During a PBS-sponsored Republican Presidential debate that year, in response to a panelist's question, Hunter the Elder offered a blatant whopper about non-citizens "being round up [and] herded into the polls" to vote, claiming, with no apparent evidence to back him up whatsoever, that "we've seen that in California" in past elections.

Like Boy Hunter's recent claim on Fox "News", Father Hunter's response to debate moderator, Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker, appears to have been simply made up out of (nearly) whole cloth...